


The House on Campo Seta Road

by akfedeau



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Background Relationships, Conflict, Discussions of Sexual/Reproductive Issues, Emotional Baggage, F/M, Gen, Illustrated, Suspense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-14
Updated: 2017-07-28
Packaged: 2018-11-23 17:57:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11407575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akfedeau/pseuds/akfedeau
Summary: After Emily Kaldwin falls unconscious on the Karnaca streets, she wakes up in the house of an old friend - and her bitterest foe. But before she can process that they’ve built a life together in the years she’s been on the throne, an Overseer witch hunt traps her inside with them, and the tension between them starts to boil. Will Emily emerge unchanged when she learns what really happened fifteen years ago? And how will she feel when she confronts her mother’s killer once and for all?A three-part sequel toThe Garden of Earthly Delights.





	1. Part 1

**Author's Note:**

> Contains a side character birth scene.

 

 

* * *

 

In the still, cold darkness of an unfamiliar room, on an unfamiliar mattress, Emily Kaldwin drifted awake.

At first, she saw nothing. Her ears rang and a chill tingled in her hands, and a comforter crinkled under her back as a pillow cushioned her skull. She pulled her scarf away from her nose and took a whiff of the place’s air - no salt - no machine oil - just a house smell, and a light perfume.

She squirmed around and tried to take in what she could in the smothering night - and as her eyes adjusted, she began to pick things out. A ceiling with contrasting moulding. A dresser with a boudoir chair. A table, maybe? Yes, a round table, with a vase of - she squinted - peonies - and a violin and its bow in the corner, propped up against the wall.

Then she peered into the other corner. A screen. A potted plant. A couch. But nothing moving - no people - no bloodflies - and no rats…

Until she glanced beyond the table and the short dividing wall, and found a man sitting by himself in front of a wide, open window.

So she lifted herself an inch off the pillow to get a better look at him.

Male, definitely. Dark hair, maybe. Some kind of spot on his left hand. No uniform. Not a Guard or Overseer. Just a collared shirt, and a dark waistcoat. He lounged unbothered by a balcony in a low-slung, round armchair - a book in his lap and his foot swaying as he read by the blue moonlight.

And sure enough, as Emily moved, the bed creaked beneath her - and her stomach lurched.

The man’s foot stopped swinging, and Emily flung herself the rest of the way down. He turned and stared over his shoulder, right at the headboard - and very slowly - and very carefully - he raised himself off the chair.

Emily relaxed her wrists and ankles to make herself look fast asleep, and the man started pacing - one step - then two - away from the window. She flattened herself against the mattress as the air grew hot and stale inside her scarf, but the man kept coming - closer - and closer - around the table and across the rug - his shoulders prowling, his legs swaying, his feet not creaking on the floorboards.

When he reached the edge of the bed, he bent over the pillow - first a little - then lower. Emily tensed. She readied herself to jump. Slowly but surely, he hooked his finger into the folded edge of her scarf - and he dragged it down, inch by inch, before he uncovered her mouth, and…

_Gasp!_

The man jerked away from her, as if he’d seen a ghost.

“Emily Kaldwin…” he whispered, in a quiet but unmistakable voice - “there’s a face I never thought I’d see again.”

A jolt shot through Emily’s face as soon as she heard him talk, and as she searched his features, her gut twisted at what she found. The same hair, streaked with silver, with the same vaulting hairline - the same sharp nose, the same long chin, and the same cold, gray, searing eyes.

“You…”

The same crooked scar that trailed down the same hollow cheekbone, the same scar, on the same face from - fifteen? Fifteen years ago…

“You…” Emily murmured again…

The man didn’t respond…

Emily’s breath hitched and her eyes seared as her mind shorted out - the hair, the voice, the scar, the face, the face, _the face!_

“It’s _you!”_

And before she could stop herself, her arms shoved him with all her strength, and Daud reeled backward with a loud, startled grunt.

Emily leaped off the bed and hooked hard into his jaw, and the peony vase rolled off the edge and shattered on the rug.

_Wham!_

Daud’s head snapped back, and before she could hit again, he disappeared in a puff of dust. He reappeared beside his armchair, still struggling to stand up, and she hurtled around the table - and rammed him into the wardrobe.

_Wham!_

Daud flailed at her with open palms and tried to push her away, but Emily threw her weight down on him hard and pinned him to the floor. He shoved at her chest. She grabbed his temples. _Crash!_ She smashed his head into the floorboards. He bared his teeth. He cried out. _Agh!_ She grabbed his head, and smashed again. Before he could recover from the second hit, she got her fingers around his throat - she squeezed - harder - _harder -_ Daud’s hips thrashed beneath her - he gagged - he choked - _harder -_ Daud’s eyes leaked tears, and his boot heels scraped against the floor - and just as he started to hack up thick spit and his face turned a sickly flush, Emily heard someone’s frantic banging on the door.

_“Daud?!”_

Emily froze. Daud’s head rolled to the side, and he gasped as blood trickled out of his nose.

The banging came again, louder this time. _“Daud, what’s going on in there?!”_

Daud coughed and breathed in shallow hiccups, and he retched, but nothing came up.

_“Daud, if you don’t let me in this instant, I’m coming in there myself…”_

Sure enough, the handle jiggled, and a woman wrenched open the door, and flew across the room and kicked the broken vase aside. Before Emily could get a look at her, she felt the woman’s arms tear her away - and she landed on the hard, stained wood, right on her tailbone.

“Daud!” The woman threw herself to her knees beside him and cradled the back of his head. “What in the Void did you do to her?!”

“Nothing,” Daud made out, and coughed again.

Emily scrambled away from them and clung to the edge of her scarf, shaking, wheezing, her pulse pounding in her ears, phlegm rising in her mouth.

“You must have- she…” The woman grabbed his shoulder, then his cheek - “don’t you- I- she could have _killed_ you, she almost _did,_ Outsider’s blood…”

“It’s all right.” Daud tried to paw her hands away in vain - then gathered himself. “I’ve had that coming for fifteen years.”

The woman sat up very straight, and her grip tightened on his crown.

“What?”

Emily cleared her throat and stopped twitching, and she forced the phlegm back down - and in the light from the window, she got a good look at the woman for the first time. The same red lips. The same thin neck. The same narrow, wiry arms. And apart from the gray at the temples, the same thick, brown hair - pulled up in a twist on the back of her head with the same gold crescent pin.

The woman’s eyes widened. “Emily?”

And Emily croaked, _“Jo?”_

Joanna took her hand off Daud’s cheek, and a brief, leaden silence fell.

“I think…” Joanna hesitated, and blinked left, then right - “I think maybe all three of us have some explaining to do.”

 

* * *

 

“It was _him?!”_

Emily followed hot on Joanna’s heels as they barged down the upstairs hall, her ears steaming and her face tingling and her veins throbbing with blood.

“You told me there was a client you liked because he could have been a good man. You said he was _better_ than the others.” Emily’s voice rang shrill in her throat. “That was _him?!”_

“There was a reason I didn’t tell you…”

“Because you knew you were doing something wrong!” Emily cried. “Outsider’s eyes, it _was_ him. That was ‘the man in the red coat.’ I can’t believe I didn’t put it together…”

“You were ten!”

“I was _blind!”_

“I fed you, I kept Prudence from beating you, the last thing you needed to know was that…”

“There really is no one who wouldn’t betray me…”

“Emily.” Joanna whirled around. _“Stop.”_

Emily skidded to a halt in front of the stairwell, and the word shook through her like a stomp on the ground.

“You were ten years old, and caught up in things that were _leagues_ beyond your control, and no matter how betrayed you feel, yelling at me isn’t going to change the past.” Joanna grabbed hold of the knob at the end of the stair rail, and glared straight into Emily’s eyes. “Do you trust your father’s judgment?”

“Why?”

“Do you?”

“Of course I do. _Why?”_

“Because for some reason, your father looked Daud in his face fifteen years ago, and he decided that there was something in him that didn’t need to die.” Joanna lowered her voice and caught her breath, and her grip loosened on the knob. “I don’t know what your father was thinking, or what that reason was. But whatever went on between them…”

Before Joanna could finish, the neighborhood loudspeaker cut her off - and as they listened, Emily clenched her fists, and turned up her eyebrows.

_Fellow Serkonans. Fellow Serkonans: A known fugitive and heretic has been spotted in the neighborhood of Campo Seta Road. Please stay in your homes as Overseers conduct a sweep of the Dockyard District - the area will be placed under lockdown until further notice. Fellow Serkonans. Fellow Serkonans: A known fugitive and heretic…_

As the loudspeaker repeated itself the color drained from Emily’s face.

“That’s me.”

“No.” Joanna shook her head. “They couldn’t have seen you…”

Emily gulped. “It has to be. Who else…?”

“People don’t know you’re in Serkonos, do they?”

“I…”

“Do the Overseers?”

“Of course not…”

“All right. Listen.” Joanna turned on her heel and threw a warning finger up. “I don’t know if they mean you. I don’t know if they mean someone else. What I know is, the Overseers in this district? They will _not_ trifle with us.”

Emily ran her tongue over her teeth as she welled up with dread.

“When that witch hunt blows over, we can settle this however you want.” Joanna kept her gaze straight, and didn’t let her finger drop. “But we’re going to wait this out. _Together._ Whether we like it or not.”

 

* * *

 

“Are you going to drink that tea I gave you, or are you going to let it get cold?”

Emily glowered at the white teacup on the table like it would stab her if she picked it up.

“It gets chilly here in the evenings, and I don’t know how long you were out.” Joanna’s mules clicked through the dim kitchen as she opened the cabinet and fetched another one, and she set her towel down on the counter by the roaring iron stove. “This has been an intense day for you. Take a minute to calm down.”

Emily crossed her arms.

“Come on. I didn’t poison it.”

Emily turned away. _“No.”_

“You’re all alone, you feel like your world has been pulled out from under you, you’re in a strange, chaotic country, you’ve woken up in a strange house…” Joanna’s eyebrows arched sky-high as she stopped for breath - “and you just discovered your mother’s killer has a love life.” She nudged the saucer closer. “Take the tea.”

Emily paused - then muttered a begrudging _thank you_ and lifted the cup - and let the steam lick at her face as she rubbed her temple and breathed in the smell. Hibiscus. Cullero ginger. Orange peel. Licorice root.

So she took a cautious sip before she asked -

“How did I get here, anyway?”

“That’s a good question. The better one is why Daud found you where he did.” Joanna poured the boiled water and shook some leaves into the second cup. “You were out cold at that secret shrine by the Overseers’ stomping grounds. You haven’t been talking to the Outsider, have you?”

Emily gave her a suspicious leer. “Maybe. Maybe not.”

“Now, now. I won’t hold it against you. He’s a handy friend when times get rough.” Joanna fetched another spoon out of the silverware drawer. “And a moody one, apparently. At least that’s what Daud said once.” She stirred the tea and whiffed it, then grabbed the tin of leaves and shook in some more. “Anyway, the Guard was sniffing around the building, and you were in no shape to defend yourself. When Daud told me, I sent him back to get you. He didn’t see it was you. Your scarf was up.”

Emily clung weakly to the teacup handle and pinched her nose. “That’s his real name, then? Daud?”

“That’s right.”

Emily looked sort of green. “What a hideous name.”

“It’s like a river krust. It grows on you.” Joanna closed the tin and put it away. “Now… do you mind if I ask you something?”

Emily took another listless sip. “What?”

“What, uh… what _exactly_ happened over in Dunwall?”

Emily dug her fingertip into the dark circle coming under her eye.

“You didn’t hear?”

“Well, sort of.” Joanna went to pour the rest of the kettle in the sink, then stopped. “I heard about the Crown Killer, and I know Delilah took the throne. But I don’t believe anything we’ve gotten since then. It’s not worth the paper it’s printed on.”

“You’ve heard just about everything.” Emily took another drink of tea. “I was at my mother’s memorial, and Delilah just… showed up. She said she was taking what belonged to her, and how it’d never been my throne.” She drank again, for good measure, and the citrusy heat soothed her throat. “I don’t remember what she said exactly, or what everyone did, I mean… the guards attacked us, and a lot of it is kind of a blur after that.” She put her cup down. “But I got the feeling she was trying to punish me - for something I didn’t even know I’d done.”

“That’s a pretty unreasonable punishment.” Joanna set the kettle back on the stove. “Why does she think the throne is hers, anyway? You might as well say it belongs to Daud.”

Emily hung her head. “Because… she’s technically my aunt.”

“What?!”

“At least that’s what she says.” Emily rested her forehead in her palm. “She says she’s Grandpa Euhorn’s elder daughter. He just never recognized her. I guess she was illegitimate, and…”

Joanna grimaced. “Is she really?”

“I don’t know. What matters is that she believes it, and she’s willing to kill to get what she wants.” Emily’s hand slid down, and she held the back of her fingers against her mouth. “She had so many guards in the throne room, and- and- my father tried to fight, but - she turned him into a statue.” She hiccuped and squeezed her eyes shut. “He’s dead.”

Joanna grabbed Emily by the shoulder. “Oh, sweetheart…”

“I was so stupid.” Emily sniffed. “I didn’t even say goodbye.”

Joanna gave her a long, gentle squeeze - before she drew away.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

“I have to deal with it sometime.” Emily dabbed at the corner of her eye. “I feel like I had my head in the sand, and I didn’t know until it was too late.”

“Well, no offense, dear, but…” Joanna drank her tea - “all royals sort of do. The Abbey and your advisors, I mean, they don’t want you to know about your people.”

“I could’ve learned if I wanted to. I just didn’t think to try.” Emily tried to keep her voice on an even keel, but she stumbled over her words. “Outsider’s eyes, last Fugue Feast we had a masquerade ball, and I… I was so tired from work, I wasn’t thinking about anything like that.”

Joanna listened…

“I was flirting with this Tyvian handmaid and someone had snuck in to kill me, and I didn’t know until my father caught him!” She flung her hands out in front of herself. “I could have died just like my mother. I wouldn’t even have known what hit me.”

Joanna leaned back against the counter, and a forlorn pity passed over her face.

“Maybe Delilah was right.” Emily stared into her teacup. “Maybe I don’t deserve the throne.”

But before Joanna could answer, they heard a woman cry out from the floor below - and Joanna’s expression melted into a wide-eyed, knowing dread.

“Outsider’s blood.”

 

* * *

 

Joanna bounded out the kitchen doorway and down the apartment stairs, and Emily stumbled out after her, following not far behind.

“Someone’s down there? Are they hurt?”

“She will be if I don’t do my job.” Joanna straightened the apron panel on her coat-dress front. “Mrs. Dent! I’m right here!”

Emily trailed after her into the dim, narrow downstairs hall, where the boiler clinked in its cabinet and the light flickered from a paltry oil lamp. Joanna rushed through the doorway to a sprawling clinic, with two rows of beds and curtain tracks - where a woman sat straining on a rolling stool, a full nine months along.

“Emily, close the shutters!” Joanna rushed down the middle aisle. “Mrs. Dent! Mrs. Dent, talk to me. Are you feeling all right?!”

Mrs. Dent made an anguished noise…

“Or you can just grunt, that’s fine!” Joanna skidded to a halt in front of the basin sink. “How fast are they coming now?”

“Every minute! I’ve been watching that clock on the wall!”

“Outsider’s blood, I’m so sorry. I should’ve come down earlier…”

“I didn’t want to disturb you!” Mrs. Dent wailed.

“You’re _supposed_ to disturb me!” Joanna grabbed the soap and washed her hands as fast as she could. “Emily, I said close those shutters! I don’t want the Overseers poking around! Then get me towels, a blanket, and a bowl of warm water!”

Emily stood rooted to the spot.

“Don’t just stand there!” Joanna flapped her hand at her with impunity. “Go!”

Emily clung to her lapels. “This can’t be…”

“Oh, it’s happening!” Joanna dried her hands on her clean white hem and raced over to Mrs. Dent’s side. “Mrs. Dent, I need to see how into it you are, all right?”

“Sure…” Mrs. Dent heaved herself up onto the bed - “do whatever you need to do…”

One foot at a time Emily unglued herself from the diamond-checkered floor, and ran between the rows of beds until she made it into the narrow waiting hall. Joanna rubbed her palms together to warm them and reached in between Mrs. Dent’s legs, and felt around and drew it out when she found what she needed to know.

“All right, uh, you are _very_ ready!” Joanna took a short step back. “Well, Empress, if you wanted to get to know your people, now’s your shot!”

“Empress?” Mrs. Dent exclaimed, in a Morley accent as thick as shepherd’s pie. “Outsider’s tits, are you who I think you are?!”

“Uh… no. Yes. Maybe?” Emily eyed the shutter mechanism from below. “Jo, I don’t know how to do any of this…”

“Just drag it closed, it’s not that hard!”

“You know what I mean!”

“Something they didn’t teach you in Dunwall Tower, huh?!” Joanna pulled a metal cart over and opened its top drawer. “‘Outsider’s tits,’ Mrs. Dent? Really?”

“There’s no saying he ain’t got tits like everyone else!”

Emily climbed up on the waiting bench under the wide front window, and grabbed the shutter by its sharp edge and strained the muscles in her back. As she dragged it down she got a glimpse of the wooden sign hanging over the door - with a peony and black cat motif, and the words _Madame Jo’s._

“I, uh…” Joanna laughed despite herself - “you know what? I guess it works.” She fished a pair of scissors and a bulb syringe out, and set them on the tray atop the cart. “Emily, where are my bowl and towels?!”

“I don’t know, where are they?!”

“In the closet in the hall!”

Emily dashed into the downstairs hallway and yanked open the towel closet door, and without thinking, she grabbed the whole stack of white bath towels in front of her. She hurried back and dumped them at the foot of Mrs. Dent’s bed, as Joanna coached Mrs. Dent through breathing in through her nose and out her mouth.

“All right, now the water!”

“What, the sink…?”

“No, get the kettle, it’s already hot!”

Emily creaked up the staircase and back into the kitchen as fast as she could, and with quick, ginger touches she felt the side of the kettle. Still warm! She grabbed the first bowl she saw on the counter and filled it all the way up, then thundered back down the stairs with drops sloshing over the sides.

“Emily?” Joanna asked. “Is that you?”

“Yes?!”

“Just set it down on top of the cart…”

Emily skidded over, tilting the bowl back and forth, and set it down with a loud clatter beside the scissors and the syringe. But as she stepped away, she made the mistake of looking down - and her cheeks went ghostly pale at the mix of blood and fluid on the floor.

“Jo?!”

Joanna braced her hand on the side of Mrs. Dent’s knee. “Yes? What?!”

Emily wrinkled her nose. “Is there supposed to be that much…?!”

 _“Emily!”_ Joanna raised her voice, then brought it back down. _“Emily._ Stay calm. You’ve been here before, you were just the baby, so you don’t remember it.” She turned back to Mrs. Dent. “Are you still pushing?”

Mrs. Dent groaned, and her fists curled into the sides of the bed…

“Outsider’s eyes.” Joanna took a quick, deep breath. “It’s already out to its chin. Are you sure this is your first, dear?”

“Positive!”

“All right…”

Mrs. Dent’s fists tightened. “Why, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing, sometimes it just happens that way!” Joanna leaned forward and repositioned her hands. “All right. It’s rotated. I need one more _big_ push, with everything you’ve got. Can you do that for me?”

“When?” Mrs. Dent sweated. “When I feel the next pressure?”

“No, right now!”

Mrs. Dent nodded and groaned, and grit her teeth as she bore down…

Emily watched in silent terror…

Joanna waited with her arms out…

And with Mrs. Dent’s last heave, a baby slid into Joanna’s hands - with a healthy, dark complexion and fine hair sticking to its scalp.

“All right!” Joanna wiped her hand on the nearest towel and checked the gold pin watch on her front. “Baby is here at 9:48 P.M.!”

“What is it?!” Mrs. Dent wheezed.

Joanna tilted its head down. “It’s a girl!”

Mrs. Dent’s eyes welled up. “Really?!”

“That’s right!” Joanna didn’t flinch when the baby screamed. “All her fingers, all her toes!”

And as Emily sank onto the rolling stool, she sighed an overwhelmed sigh - and she watched the scene unfold, fish-eyed, as she waited for her nerves to settle down.


	2. Part 2

 

 

* * *

 

The moon rose over the rooftops as the clock ticked on the clinic wall, and Joanna wrote some notes in a thick logbook, then cleared the afterbirth and mopped the floor.

Emily scooted her stool toward Mrs. Dent’s bedside as Joanna tied off the baby’s cord, then cut it with the scissors from the cart and threw the rest away. Once she’d inspected the stump, she refilled the bowl and sponged it off - and in the midst of it, she giggled.

Mrs. Dent peeked up. “What?”

“I’m still thinking about it. ‘Outsider’s tits.’”

“I swear, I’ll never live that down…”

Then once Joanna had weighed the baby and bundled it in Mrs. Dent’s arms, she disappeared down the hallway - and left Emily, Mrs. Dent, and the baby alone.

Mrs. Dent busied herself with the baby, and Emily had nothing to say - so she took a long, languid look at the clinic to avoid making eye contact. A white chest of drawers behind each bed. The white basin sink, three faucets long. Ivory blankets with hospital corners, and white, ironed slips on the pillows. And a long, black poster with white paint, hung underneath the clock - cross-sections of hips, not pregnant, then very, drawn from the front and side.

“Uh… Your Highness.” Mrs. Dent finally spoke up. “I don’t mean to be peculiar…”

“Hmm?”

“You may wanna take yourself elsewhere…”

“What?”

“Jo said I’m supposed to try to feed her…”

“Oh.” Emily swiveled the stool so her body faced away. “I won’t watch.”

“It’s not that I’m modest, or anything.” Mrs. Dent lifted the baby up. “It’s just I didn’t want to offend you.”

Emily swiveled back. “Please. After tonight?”

“Good point.”

Mrs. Dent undid the shoulder buttons on her white patient gown, and she wrestled with it as she figured out how to fold the fabric aside.

“Actually,” Emily began, then stopped to sort out her thoughts - “while you’re doing that, could I ask you something?”

Mrs. Dent propped the baby up to her breast. “Sure. I mean - yes, Your Highness. Go on.”

“Do you know the man who lives upstairs?”

“Huh.” Mrs. Dent mulled it over. “Come to think of it, I don’t.” She nudged the baby’s cheek toward herself, and it latched on. “I hear a violin playing up there sometimes, and Jo tells me that it’s him. But I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen him. It’s like he’s a ghost.”

“So you don’t know who he is.”

“I wouldn’t know him from the Outsider himself.”

Emily didn’t answer. A whistling breeze rocked the sign outside.

“Why?” Mrs. Dent asked. “Do you know him?”

“I… um…” Emily hesitated - “I did. Once.”

Mrs. Dent kept holding the baby close, and waited for her to explain.

“He’s a criminal. A hired one. And he hurt someone very close to me.” Emily pulled her lip into her teeth when she felt a quaver coming on. “And I guess I just didn’t predict he’d be doing so well for himself.” She swallowed hard. “I thought he’d be dead, or a beggar, or something. You know, that’d… make sense, I thought. It’s just surreal that it’s like nothing happened all those years ago.”

“Well, for what it’s worth… which is… probably not much… there’s plenty of shady characters that come down here to forget the past.” Mrs. Dent patted the side of the baby’s blanket as it nursed. “Take my husband. He was a Dead Eel before he left Dunwall. I was a Hatter, myself. Now we’re tinkers.”

Emily listened, deep in thought.

“I don’t know what he did, so I’m sure I’m not being much help. But in all the years I’ve been coming here, he’s done nothing but haunt the walls.” Mrs. Dent flattened some of the baby’s tufts of hair. “If he were up to something and hiding it, he’d be doing a damn good job. I can’t tell you if he’s sorry - but I’d say he’s not doing it anymore.”

Emily folded one arm over her stomach, then brought her other fist to her mouth. The clock kept ticking over the made beds and the clean white chests of drawers - like the whole clinic stood still, except for their corner with the glowing lamp.

And from behind her, she heard Mrs. Dent gently cut in again.

“Uh… Your Highness?”

Emily snapped her attention back to the bed. “What?”

Mrs. Dent turned up her eyebrows. “Would you mind if I named her after you?”

“I- um…” Emily found herself tongue-tied - “you’d want to do that?”

“I don’t know.” Mrs. Dent stroked the baby’s head. “She looks like an Emily to me.”

Emily cracked an awkward smile. “Well… then… I’m flattered, thank you.”

“No, thank you for spending time with me.” Mrs. Dent fiddled with the blanket under the baby’s chin and hushed. “I know that there are people out there who think you aren’t up to snuff. I say put them on the throne as children and see how things work out.”

Emily let her forearms go limp over her knees.

“I worked so hard at it. I promise.”

Mrs. Dent just said, “I know.”

They sat in another short silence together, and the wind creaked through the window panes - until Mrs. Dent’s eyes went streetlamp-wide as she remembered what she’d done.

“Oh, and… sorry for swearing around you.”

Emily snickered. “I’m not going to cut your head off. It’s all right.”

“It was kind of the heat of the moment, I mean…”

Emily held up her hands. “Trust me, I know.”

Mrs. Dent fed, and Emily rubbed her fingers back and forth between her knees - and the silence grew more heavy and still with each minute on the clock. Then Emily noticed voices drifting in - first Joanna’s, then, softer, Daud’s - and the wheels squeaked underneath her as she stood up from the stool.

“Are you going to be all right here for a minute?” She murmured.

Mrs. Dent blinked. “Sure, I’ll be fine.”

 

* * *

 

The boiler kept making noise as Emily slipped into the night-blue hall, and she edged toward the yellow-lit room where she heard the voices and clinking glass.

When she reached the corner she flattened herself against the stairway wall, and peeked in through the open doorway to see what she could find. Shelves. More shelves. A bare whale-oil bulb hanging from the ceiling on a wire. Daud sat on the unvarnished table, stripped down to his suspenders and bloodied shirt - with a brown bottle and his folded waistcoat and a couple of jars at his side.

And Emily watched Joanna turn his open collar down, and poke and prod around the deep, black bruises forming on his throat.

“Have you seen any Overseers on the streets from up there?”

Daud tilted his chin to give her a better view. “No.”

“I didn’t leave any bone charms lying out, did I?”

“I put them away for you.”

“In the…”

“In the lead-lined box.”

Joanna exhaled with relief. “Good.”

Emily crept toward them until she passed the moulding on the towel closet door - and she craned her neck just far enough to see them, but kept her feet in the shadows.

“Outsider’s blood. She can hold her own in a fight, that’s for sure.” Joanna dabbed some of the dried blood off Daud’s nostrils, then stepped away. “I hope she didn’t break it.”

Daud sniffed. “What’s it to you?”

“What’s it to _me?_ I’m the one who has to look at it all day.”

“Hnh.” Daud grunted and sniffed again as more blood seeped out of his nose. “It’s just a face. You’ve been looking at it for sixteen years before.”

“Sweetheart, please.” Joanna came back and patted Daud’s cheek. “Your face has been through enough.”

Emily’s stomach tightened a little, but she shook it off. Joanna shoved a cotton ball up Daud’s nostril and pulled another out of its jar, and as she uncorked the brown bottle Emily read the label. _Alcohol._

“I wouldn’t have minded if she’d killed me,” Daud mused.

“Well, _I_ would have. Very much.” Joanna tamped down hard on the cotton ball to get the last dregs in the bottle out. “Who am I going to give a hard time around here, if not you?”

“You almost killed that guardsman last week.”

“Which, the… the one with the limp? Abel?”

“Right.”

“That was different.” Joanna held the cotton ball up to his brow bone. “He was in way over his head and his poor lover was already ten weeks along, and I was so busy trying to calm _him_ down…”

Daud hissed when she touched him…

“I know…” Joanna’s voice dropped to an indulgent coo as she dabbed at the cut above his eye. “Anyway, I took care of it. She won’t have to worry about it anymore. She won’t have to worry about him, either. At least that’s what I hope.”

Emily kept watching, her cheek pressed against the wall.

“You know, I got a letter from the Cat the other day.”

Daud rubbed his swollen cheek. “That so?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Is Betty still running things over there?”

“She is. Can you believe it? I don’t.” Joanna tugged Daud’s eyebrow up and swabbed beneath it, her face inches from his mouth. “I had no idea when I gave it to her it’d be a lifelong inheritance.” She set the cotton ball down beside him and took some gauze and tape out of the other jar, then taped over his eyebrow and patted his shoulder, as if to say _I’m done._ “She says she got another note from Portia. She’s living by the old waterfront. She’s a painter now, she’s actually kind of making a name for herself…”

“What does she paint?”

“Courtesans.”

“Mm.”

“Betty says she’s pretty good.”

As she heard the old courtesans’ names, Emily grinned despite herself.

“Whatever happened to…” Daud licked some dried blood off his lip - “what was her name… Loulia?”

“Oh, she’s a clerk for the Courier now. Betty wrote to me about that last month. I always knew she’d go back to clerking, the Cat was just too dull for her.” Joanna opened the storage cabinet and started putting her supplies away. “Violetta, um… I think Violetta got married a few years ago, and I think Genevieve has been making ladies’ intimates in Drapers Ward…”

Daud cut in. “Jo?”

Joanna set the gauze jar down and looked over her shoulder. “What?”

“Do you miss it?”

With a great heave of her shoulders, Joanna sighed - and turned around - and she squeezed Daud to her chest and buried her cheek in the top of his head.

“Why would you say something like that?”

Daud let a moment of silence pass.

“Because.” His hand crawled up her back and his gaze sank to the floor. “I’d hate to think you threw away your livelihood for a man who didn’t deserve it.”

“You really didn’t.” Joanna chuckled and smoothed his graying hair. “But no. I still don’t miss it. Not a day in my life.”

Emily’s face fell from confusion to disgust, and she took a deep, shaky breath as she unstuck herself from the wall. She fled straight up the staircase. She grabbed the railing too hard on the way up. From the inside pocket of her coat, she pulled a small, leathery heart - and when she brushed its glass face, the gears inside it whirred, and it came to life.

“Mother?” Emily sat on one of the varnished steps with a graceless _whump._ “I’m sorry to drag you into all of this, but I need to talk to you.”

The Heart lit up and cast a greenish glow on the lower half of Emily’s face.

“You overheard them, didn’t you?” Emily squeezed the heart near the top, around its valves. “What am I supposed to think of this? Do you even know what’s going on?”

_I feel the joy of the mother, the grief of the miscarriage, the fear of the adolescent girl._

Emily blinked. “What?”

_All feelings pass through this place._

Emily sighed. “That doesn’t help.” She planted her face with indignation into the palm of her hand. “I mean, I don’t know how to feel about the _people_ here.”

The Heart stayed silent - so she squeezed it again.

 _He sees his students in his dreams,_ the Heart said, _and he wonders where they are. Vladko. Rinaldo. Thomas. Billie Lurk._

“Billie Lurk?” Emily mumbled to herself, then - “no, never mind. I don’t want to talk about any students. I want to talk about _Jo.”_ She stared into the Heart’s clicking gears, like that would convince it to tell her more. “She tried so hard to be a friend to me when I was at the Cat, and she- what? She just _accepts_ him? How can she sleep at night?”

The Heart hesitated - before…

_She bought fresh flowers for the clinic this morning. Her mother would be so proud of her._

“Come on.” Emily gave it another vigorous squeeze. “Now you’re just being dense.”

_She has left the brothel behind, but she still wears her jasmine perfume._

“Jasmine? Really?” Emily curled her lip. “Why would I care about her perfume?”

Again, no answer - but Emily softened her brow.

“You’re doing that thing where you talk to me in riddles again, aren’t you?” Emily caressed the Heart’s skin back and forth with her thumb. “All right. I’ll humor you. The perfume is from her old life… but she’s left the brothel behind. She’s not a courtesan anymore… she’s doing her mother’s work.”

The Heart waited for her.

“The jasmine then… and the flowers now…” Emily frowned again, this time in thought - “she’s still the same Jo. So the bad is the same… but so is the Jo who was my friend.”

The Heart pulsed once into her hand, as if to say, _that’s right._

“But that means that the Daud who killed you, who… he… he stabbed you in the _gut,_ and that’s the same Daud who’s in there? Soothing her? That’s not how these things are supposed to go!”

 _I almost didn’t recognize him,_ the Heart said. _But I will never forget that scar._

“Exactly!” Emily flung her free hand out toward the wall. “Haven’t you ever met someone you thought was irredeemable, but then they did something decent, and they didn’t make sense anymore?”

The Heart said nothing.

Emily huffed. “What am I saying? Of course you have.” She pushed a lock of loosening hair back behind her ear. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t yell at you. None of this is your fault.”

The Heart just beat in time with its gears - in and out - then in - then out.

“It’s just… the day it happened, I started thinking.” Emily glanced through the balusters to check for eavesdroppers, and found none. “All the things I wanted to do if I ever got my hands on him. I could have him hanged. I could behead him. I could put him in front of a firing squad.”

The Heart didn’t respond.

“And then I started thinking if I just _wanted_ it badly enough, something terrible would happen to him. I wouldn’t even have to do it myself.” Emily grit her back teeth, and a poisonous flame lit in her eyes. “Losing the hand that killed you. Crows picking out his eyes. You’d be horrified if you knew what I was wishing at ten years old.” She hiccuped, and her fingernails dug into the Heart’s sides. “But now that I’m here in this house, and I… I’ve seen him, and I…?” Tears pricked at her eyes. “I don’t know if it’d make me feel better.”

She hung her head.

_I was wrong._

Emily’s fingers scrambled around the Heart, and she cradled it in both her hands. “What?”

_He has strayed from the path within him. He never killed again._

Emily bit her lip - and squeezed its leathery flesh one last time.

 _His hands did violence,_ her mother’s voice said. _But there was a different dream in his heart._

Emily rubbed the back of her neck - then her temple - then the bridge of her nose - and she gazed down to the end of the staircase, and let out one last dejected sigh.

“I’m sorry to trouble you so late.” She closed her eyes and kissed the Heart on its glass window - and nestled it back into her pocket and patted it for good measure. “Good night.”

 

* * *

 

Some time after the clock chimed midnight, Emily shuffled back downstairs - and made her way to the supply room doorway, and hesitated before she went inside.

She found Joanna alone in the narrow room, still in her white coat dress, with a litany of metal instruments spread out across the tabletop. Forceps. Scissors. Tweezers. Some kind of fork with curved tines. A motley collection of long, thin sticks, with loops and scrapers and hooks on top, and a pile on the doorway end with everything at once. She pulled them out of a small autoclave and lay them on white towels in straight lines, undisturbed by the clinks and wheezes from the boiler cabinet in the hall.

She mouthed numbers as she counted down the rows with her finger - _one - two - three - four…_

And she still didn’t see Emily there - so Emily cleared her throat.

Joanna’s eyes snapped up to the doorway, and she stopped counting.

“What?”

“Uh…” Emily searched for something to say. “Do you need any help in here?”

“Don’t be silly. You’re the empress. I can do it by myself.”

“I don’t mean to badger you about it, but I could use something to do.”

“Oh.” Joanna shrugged. “Well, if it means that much to you, I’m not going to resist.”

Emily dragged a short stool over from the corner of the room, then sat and picked up a pair of scissors that curved at the ends. She stuck her fingers through the holes and peered at them, then opened and shut it - open - and shut.

“Just sit right where you are and hand me things from that dirty pile.” Joanna scraped something off the inside of the autoclave lid with her fingernail. “I’ll tell you what I need next.”

Emily hesitated - then put the scissors down.

“All right, first…” Joanna studied the autoclave with her hand on her chin - “could you hand me the #2 curettes?”

“The what?”

“The ones with the tear-shaped loop on top.”

Emily dug through the tangled pile and found two - three - then four - then five - then held them out across the table in a messy handful. “There you go.”

Joanna gave them a good go-over, then turned them all loop-side up - and stuck them side-by-side in the autoclave dish, one by one.

“Could you hand me those scissor-looking forceps?”

Emily fished another pair of scissors out of the pile with a clatter. “These?”

“That’s right.”

Joanna took them from her and stuck them over on the end by themselves.

“And the #3 curettes?”

“Those…”

“Are the ones with the notch at the end.”

Emily grabbed three, then four of them out of the pile like a bunch of matchsticks - and this time, when she handed the bundle over, she talked back.

“So.”

The autoclave clinked as Joanna loaded the curettes, but she didn’t respond.

“We’re just not going to talk about it, are we?”

“No.” Joanna rearranged some of them so they stood in even rows. “We’re not. I’m a grown woman, I can make my own decisions about things. And so can you.”

“So you decided it was fine that he kidnapped me.”

“No. I didn’t. I almost killed him when I found out.”

“Oh, you _almost_ did, but you didn’t.” Emily’s voice tinged with snark. “He’s a killer, Jo. I don’t think anyone would’ve missed him when he was gone.”

“And he’s the only man who ever treated me like the equal that I was.” Joanna turned one of the longer curettes upside down. “People are complicated. Dunwall was complicated. Things are so much simpler now.”

Emily fumed.

“I’m not going to ask you to forgive him. Frankly, I’d think you were a doormat if you did.” Joanna tried to shove a pelvimeter in, too, but when it didn’t fit, she took it out. “And you don’t have to like me anymore, either. But you should know he saved your life.”

Emily set down the steel retractor that she’d picked up.

“What?”

Joanna moved the autoclave over and cleared the clean instruments out of the way.

“I… I mean…”

Joanna blinked. “You mean you don’t know?”

Emily grimaced. “Saved my life? _How?”_

Joanna closed the autoclave lid with a sudden, metallic _snap!_

“My dear…” She lowered the lever and sealed it shut - “why do you think Delilah is so mad at you?”

Emily shook her head and raised her hands, to say she didn’t know - and Joanna sighed.

“Fifteen years ago - the day your mother died - Daud had a visit from the Outsider.” Joanna rested her fingers on the autoclave top. “They weren’t on good terms with each other, and they hadn’t been for a long time - so the Outsider decided to give him…” she squinted - “what we’ll say was a parting shot. A name. ‘Delilah.’ No clues, no directions. That was all.”

Emily stared at her, and her hand fumbled through the pile for something to hold.

“He’d never heard the name, and he had no idea who she was, so he didn’t think about it. He tried to forget it. Along with everything else he’d done.” Joanna picked up the autoclave and set it on the other, shorter table against the wall. “But six months later, he realized it wasn’t going to leave him alone - and he started to wonder if the… Delilah thing was some kind of second chance.”

Emily found some kind of spoon curette and squeezed it, still staring at Joanna headon.

“He started digging into some of the most decrepit places in Dunwall, and the more he looked, the more he could see that Delilah was bigger than he thought. And I don’t know if I believe in cosmic punishment, but if it’s real, it hit him. Hard.” Joanna hooked the autoclave up to the lamp-sized whale oil canister on the shelf below. “He lost respect. He lost some of his Whalers. He nearly lost his mind. His own lieutenant, Billie, betrayed him. I don’t think he’s ever been the same after that.” She flipped a switch on the side of the autoclave, and it started to make soft chuffing sounds. “Finally he traced Delilah to Brigmore Manor, and saw what she’d been planning all along. She was going to possess you - but he outwitted her, and trapped her in the Void.”

Emily let go of the curette with gaping, haunted eyes, and she took a shallow breath in, but forgot to breathe it out.

“Until… you know.” Joanna gave Emily a sheepish shrug. “He thought it would be permanent. I don’t know how she broke out.”

Emily blinked - and blinked - and finally let the stale air out of her lungs - and her gaze fell to the pile of dirty instruments as she stewed in her thoughts.

“The point is, if Daud hadn’t intervened, Delilah would’ve finished her ritual, and she would have been playing empress in your skin until the day you died.” Joanna stepped away from the shelf and took her place back where she’d begun. “What you make of that is up to you. I just think you deserve to know.”

“You’re lying.” Emily’s shoulders sank, and she kneaded her palms. “He wouldn’t do that. You have to be making this up.”

“I’m sorry. I’m not.”

“Then you think too much of him,” Emily mumbled. “He’d just as soon Delilah went through with it.”

“Not quite.”

“How did you put that together?”

“He told me.” Joanna lowered her voice. “He says saving you was probably the only decent thing he ever did. That maybe it would… make amends for some of what he’s done.”

But just as Emily opened her mouth to answer, they heard a thundering knock - one, two, three bangs of a heavy fist, echoing through the clinic walls.

Emily flinched. An eerie, waxy pallor came over Joanna’s face. With slow, wraithlike footsteps, she inched toward the supply room door - and she took Emily by the shoulder, her fingers shaking and wire-taut.

“Emily?” Her soft voice quavered. “Stay in this room.”

Emily whispered, “What?”

“It’s the Overseers.” Joanna reached into the instrument pile with her other hand. “I’m going to turn the light off, and lock you in…”

“What if it’s Mr. Dent…?”

“It’s not.” Joanna pulled out a scalpel, and the blade gleamed under the light. “Now. Once I lock you in here, I don’t want you to move, or make a sound. I’ll tap on the door when it’s clear. Then…”

Emily started to get up. “Please, I can get rid of them…”

 _“No.”_ Joanna slipped the scalpel into the pocket of her coat, and she kept taking shallow breaths as she dragged her feet into the hall. “I’m going to go upstairs and tell Daud - and then I’ll come back down.” She gulped. “This is my clinic. I have to do this alone.”


	3. Part 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Contains discussion of sexual/reproductive issues.

 

 

* * *

 

When Joanna reached the waiting room, she pinched her cheeks to give herself some blush - and nudged the front door open only far enough to see the Overseer outside.

“Overseer! Good evening. What can I do for you?”

“Are you Joanna Haight?” The Overseer asked, in a terse, muffled voice.

Joanna nodded. “That’s me.”

“Owner of Madame Jo’s?”

“Uh-huh.”

The Overseer opened a slim, brown notebook, then fished a pencil out of his uniform.

“Right. I’m here to investigate the appearance of a wanted heretic, as per the Grand Guard’s quarantine of the Campo Seta District.” He flipped through page after page until he came to the first blank one. “I’m going to ask you some basic questions. I encourage you not to lie.”

Joanna leaned on the doorframe, and crossed her arms and raised her eyebrow. “Don’t you usually come in pairs?”

“My partner is sick tonight.” The Overseer answered with words like bullets as he scrawled something in shorthand. “Now. In the last day, have you experienced any signs of imminent witchcraft? Ringing in the ears? Thin, black smoke? An unexplained metallic taste?”

“No.” Joanna played with the turned-up lapel neckline on her coat, and took a long, lingering glance at the saber on the Overseer’s hip. “What’s this heretic’s name, anyway?”

“You’re not at liberty to know.” The Overseer kept scribbling, one curlicue after the next. “In the last week, have you seen any… suspicious people in the district?”

“No…”

“Any signs of someone building arcane structures, or drawing ritual circles?”

_“No.”_

“Good. Now. To this evening.” The Overseer turned to the next page. “Has anyone come to your door, and asked to hide in your residence?”

Joanna frowned. “No…”

“Any forced entry? Did you… see or hear someone trying to break in?”

“No…”

The Overseer scratched something else in his notebook, then dog-eared the page. “Hmm.”

“I’ve been up with a patient,” Joanna insisted. “If someone had been here, I’d know.”

The Overseer thought for a minute - then snapped the notebook shut.

“All right. I’m still going to need to search your clinic for arcane influence.” The Overseer’s masked chin tipped up as he tried to get a look inside. “Runes. Bone charms. Any indications of Outsider worship. We think the heretic we’re looking for might not have worked alone, and we need to rule out confederates…”

Before he could move, Joanna propped her hand on the side of the door.

“Do you have a warrant?”

“I’m an Overseer.” The Overseer stuck his foot on her threshold. “If you’re not guilty, you have nothing to worry about.”

Joanna hesitated for a long time, before…

“You’re right.” Her face softened, but when she grinned at him, she bared her teeth. “I’m just being silly. Come in. I’ll show you around.”

 

* * *

 

Joanna shut the door behind the Overseer, and he pocketed his notebook as he came inside - and with measured, easy steps, he left wet boot prints on the floor.

“Now, we’ve got a new baby in here, so try not to be too loud. Otherwise, make yourself at home, Overseer…” she waved her hand in circles, as if to prompt him - “Overseer…”

“What?”

“I didn’t catch your name.”

“I didn’t give it.”

“Could you?”

“Hayward.”

“Very nice.” Joanna slipped out of his way, so Hayward could look around. “You don’t sound Serkonan. Are you from Gristol?”

“I grew up in Dunwall.” Hayward inspected Joanna’s desk and the card cabinet that loomed to its right. “I came here on a transfer three years ago.”

“What a coincidence. I’m from Dunwall.” Joanna fiddled with the flowers in her desk vase as she waited for him to finish up. “I lived there until I was thirty, and then I just…” she shrugged - “I don’t know. I guess I lost my taste for it. It’s an unforgiving town.”

Hayward sized her up through the eyeholes in his mask. “I used to hear limericks about a girl named Joanna from Dunwall.”

“Don’t believe everything you hear, dear. You’ll never know up from down.” Joanna led him through the wide entryway and across the tile floor. “Now, this is where I see my patients, and they tell me what they’re here for…”

“I thought you did births,” Hayward snipped.

“I do. And so much more.” Joanna kept crossing tile after tile. “Now, this is Mrs. Dent. She just had her little girl tonight…”

Mrs. Dent nodded to him. “Evening, Overseer.”

Hayward strolled on without acknowledging her. “Hnh.”

“No, you can’t stay open just doing births. You’ve got to… what’s the word… diversify.” Joanna led Hayward to the far left corner of the room, and let him open the door and shut it when he just found a toilet inside. “When I first opened, I had people coming with what they call ‘midshipman’s friend,’ and I remembered my mother said you could treat it with oil of Tyvia. I kept treating things. They kept coming. It just sort of went from there.”

Hayward picked up the syringe left over from Mrs. Dent’s birth, then set it down - and Joanna watched him intently as he opened the drawers on the instrument cart.

“You’re awfully interested in what I do here.”

“Am I?”

“I thought you were on a witch hunt.”

“We hear sometimes about these clinics when they dabble in the arcane arts.” Hayward bent over and sniffed Joanna’s sink, his arms behind his back. “Purging wombs. Strange rituals so women never come down with child.”

“Goodness. It sounds like something from a penny dreadful.”

“I’m afraid not.” Hayward stood up. “We see their posters in the street. They never advertise it outright. ‘Clearing feminine obstructions.’ But we know what’s going on.”

“Wait- you…” Joanna stammered…

Hayward stared her down…

And Joanna hesitated again - before she let out a rollicking laugh.

“Oh, ‘feminine obstructions,’ that’s nonsense. That could be all kinds of things.” She fanned her fingers over her chest like a bemused courtesan. “Their mothers bring them in and they’re worried _sick_ that something must be wrong, but more often than not they’re just nervous, or they don’t eat well enough.” She primped the back of her hair as she heel-clicked toward the hall. “It’s not uncommon to be irregular when you first get your courses, anyway. I say to give it a couple years, and…”

Hayward cleared his throat.

Joanna looked innocent. “Something wrong, dear?”

Hayward stiffened. “I’ve heard enough.”

“Yes, well, if you never talk about it, the problem never gets solved.” Joanna gave him another toothy, insincere smile. “Should we keep going?”

“I wish we would.”

So with an insinuating wave, Joanna led him into the dark hall.

Emily felt the vibrations of their footsteps through the floor, and she huddled under the supply room table and cupped her hands over her mouth.

Hayward opened some of the end table drawers. “What’s in here?”

Joanna kept tabs on him from over her shoulder. “It’s just a hallway. It’s not going to bite.”

Emily waited and listened, her eyes wide in the cloying dark…

Hayward nodded to the supply room. “And what’s in there?”

“It’s for the patients,” Joanna lied. “Sometimes their birth has issues, or I’ve got to stitch them up. It’s nice to have somewhere they can rest without all the clinic noise.”

Emily shivered as their voices came closer, her ribs shaking in her coat.

Hayward studied the ceiling. “I’d like to see it…”

“Well…” Joanna walked past the boiler, still keeping him in the corner of her eye - “let’s see now…”

Emily’s blood throbbed in her veins, and she readied herself to jump. Joanna jiggled the supply room handle back… and forth… once… then twice… and Emily tracked the shadows of their feet under the door…

“Ah.” Joanna turned around. “Would you look at that. It’s locked.” She eased herself past Hayward and started back down the hall. “I’ll have to go upstairs and get the key. I’ll be right back…”

“I’ll come along.”

“Oh, you don’t need to do that.”

Hayward took a heavy step after her. “I think I do.”

“Really, Hayward, it’s almost one in the morning. I think you’ve seen enough.” Joanna put her foot on the bottom of the staircase. “I’ve shown you my clinic. You didn’t ask to see my house.”

“I’m asking now.”

Joanna glowered at him, unflinching. “Then come back _tomorrow,_ with the Guard. You know, some things do need a warrant…”

“Do they?” Hayward took a second step. “Or are you afraid of what I’ll find up there?”

Joanna’s hand closed so hard around the stair rail that her knuckles turned white.

“What?”

“The Abbey’s known about your clinic for years. Don’t embarrass yourself.”

Joanna took a long, unsteady breath - but when she turned around, she just smiled.

“See, I don’t believe that.”

“Don’t you?”

“No. But I think you have.”

Hayward stopped.

“Oh, believe me, I’m sure the witch hunt is just the Abbey doing its job.” Joanna let go of the rail. “But you have to admit, it works out well for you that it happened in my part of town.”

Hayward tilted his chin up. “I don’t know what you’re getting at.”

“Find some bone charms - some pennyroyal tinctures - lock an old midwife up. What a good little star on your record, isn’t it?” Joanna squinted. “What a job well done.” She backed him up toward the towel closet, one prowling step at a time. “And isn’t it convenient - that it would shut the mouth - of the only other person who knows where you were a week ago?”

Hayward’s back went board-straight, but he didn’t respond.

“Isn’t that right, Overseer Hayward?” Joanna cocked her head. “Or should I call you… Abel?”

As soon as Hayward heard his name, he froze.

“You thought you were pretty clever, pilfering some poor guard’s clothes. No one’s seen you without your mask in years. Well, no one except that girl you like.” Joanna reached into her pocket and brandished her scalpel against the side of his chest. “But I’ve known men in ways you’ve never even dreamed of before.” With one clean swipe she stuck her foot between his parted legs, and with one hard _thunk_ she threw her other hand down and pinned him to the wall. “I know when a man’s shoes don’t fit him - and I _never - forget - a voice.”_

The leather on Hayward’s gloves creaked as he scraped his fingers against his palm - and when he finally answered in a small, hushed voice, his throat quavered.

“What do you want?”

“If I’d met you when I was younger, I’d have asked you to pay up. Four hundred a month, to keep me quiet. I’m not that easy anymore.” Joanna leaned in so close that she smelled his stale hair under his mask. “I want you to go back to where you came from. I want you to go to your boss, and I want you to tell him Madame Jo’s is clean. No evidence of witchcraft. I want you to spread the word to your little boys’ club to leave this place alone…” she clenched her teeth - “and I don’t want to see so much as the Abbey’s third cousin here again.”

Hayward gulped. “I could just kill you.”

“You could.” Joanna tilted the scalpel just enough for it to scrape his ribs through his robe. “But I hope you listened to your mother’s warnings when you lived in Dunwall.”

Hayward’s head moved in careful inches as he looked at her - then the scalpel - and he must have put two and two together, because his neck relaxed and his shoulders slumped.

“The Crown Killer is watching,” Joanna whispered in his ear. “You just don’t know which one.”

He stared at her. She stared back at him. He said nothing. She didn’t budge. And after a minute of pin-drop silence, the clock chimed from the clinic wall, and it rang in their ears before it faded - one deep, solitary _bong._

“It’s getting late, isn’t it?” Joanna asked.

“Yes…”

“Yes,” Joanna repeated. “That’s what I thought.” She drew the scalpel back and stepped away, but kept it pointed at Hayward’s heart. “They’ll be wondering what’s keeping you. I think it’s time for you to go.”

 

* * *

 

As the Overseers stomped down the street and the last of the neighborhood’s lights went dark, Emily climbed - step by creaking step - back up the apartment stairs.

The wind creaked gently through the moulding as she crept toward the bedroom doorway, and she spied her father’s sword on the end table underneath the window. When she went to take it, she noticed a pair of silvergraphs at its side - she took one by its heavy frame, and tilted it so she could see - and saw two rows of courtesans in feathers and silk, all smiling back.

Emily squinted at it, then peered closer to pick their faces out. Eight or nine women, young, made-up, that she didn’t recognize - and in the middle, Betty, in a smart madame’s waistcoat. She set it down, then picked up the other - Joanna looking coy in a black peignoir - and when she turned it over, she saw someone had scribbled a date, _1849._

 _Ugh._ Emily grimaced, then stuffed the sword in her belt. She grabbed Joanna’s portrait again, and almost turned it face-down - but at the last minute, her fingers fell away, and she went inside.

She found the bedroom cleaner than she left it, with the bed remade and the pillows fluffed, and the rug smoothed in the places where she and Daud had kicked it up. Someone had swept the fragments of the broken vase off the floor, and left the dustpan in the corner and laid the flowers on the tabletop. And Daud had returned to the same chair she’d seen him in when she woke up - like a prisoner who wouldn’t leave, even though he had no bars on his cell.

But before Emily could speak for herself, she heard him.

“Come to finish the job?”

 _Outsider’s blood,_ the _voice._ Emily’s heart sucked in her chest.

“Make sure you start under the ear, and cut deep enough to reach the artery.” Daud drew a line down from his ear and across his throat. “It’s quicker. More merciful. Unless you want me to suffer, in which case… don’t.”

Emily steeled herself - and pulled her gut in - and took a deep breath.

“No.”

Daud picked up the half-full glass that sat on his end table by a bottle of milk. “Why not?”

“I’m not going to give you the relief.”

Daud didn’t respond.

“I know your kind of people. You think death would set you free.” Emily stepped one shaky boot step into the room. “Well, I’m not going to give you that. I want you to live with what you’ve done.”

“Don’t worry.” Daud took a dispassionate sip of his milk. “I do.”

Emily glanced at the lavish bed across the room. “Do you?”

Daud set his glass down. “I do.”

Emily chewed her lip and racked her brain for what to tell him next - until Daud patted his stomach, and made a faint, discomforted noise.

“So. You’re just going to walk away, like your father.”

Emily’s nerves prickled. “Don’t talk about him.”

“You don’t want anything else from me.”

“No.”

“But you haven’t left the room.”

“You’d really rather I kill you.”

“No. But I’m not convinced you’re done.” Daud rubbed his thumb in idle circles on the arm of the chair. “Delilah survived what I did to her. I’m not sure I’m much help to you.”

“That’s not…”

“Then what _do_ you want?”

“I just want you to tell me why.”

Again, Daud said nothing. Emily fought the twitch in her lip and the burning in her nose.

“I just want to know - what meant so much to you - that it was worth my mother’s life.”

Daud didn’t react. He didn’t fidget. He didn’t even reach for his milk. Until at last, as a fly buzzed by the balcony, he let out a quiet sigh - and the shoulders of his silhouette sank as he cupped his fingers over his glass.

“You won’t like the answer if I tell you.”

“I’m not leaving until I hear it.”

“Fine.” Daud rested his elbow on the chair arm, and his voice stayed clinical and calm. “I did it because I was paid to. I didn’t have it in me to say no.”

Emily just stood there, fifteen years of pent-up tension turning in her gut.

“Moral courage is a strange thing. It finds you in places you don’t expect.” Daud tipped his glass back and forth and watched the white film roll down the sides. “In the Void. In paintings. Bathtubs.”

“And let me guess, in brothels?”

“There, too.” Even in the cover of darkness, something softened in Daud’s face. “I’m not one for Overseers, and I…” he eyed Emily’s left hand - “suspect neither are you - but there’s something in the Strictures about ‘the hands that steal and kill and destroy.’ I can’t remember which. Doesn’t matter.”

Emily didn’t tell him which one.

“Overseers make it look clean and easy to absolve yourself. Throw out your bone charms. Stop killing. Curse the Void for the things you’ve done.” Daud took a last sip of his milk to finish it off. “The Void doesn’t make people do anything, but that’s beside the point. They’ll tell you about redemption.” He paused. “They don’t mention the guilt.”

“So you do feel guilty. Aren’t you special?”

“I was, many years ago.”

Another breeze blew into the room and rustled a neighbor’s windchimes - and a pair of rough voices called to each other on the road outside.

“Well. At least you’re honest.” Emily started to turn around. “That was all I needed…”

“Wait.”

Emily glanced over her shoulder - and her toe scraped along the floor.

“Before you leave…” Daud studied the inside of his glass - “I’d like one last favor from you.”

“Why should I do _anything_ for you?”

“Because it’s not for me.”

Emily squinted at him with disbelief - but she decided to let him talk.

“Go to the bookcase.”

“Why?”

“Just do it.”

“Where?”

“The one behind the screen.”

Emily shuffled back into the room, then pushed the screen aside - and sure enough, she found an L-shaped bookcase in the corner, three shelves high.

“Look between the dictionary and _Death in the Month of Songs.”_

Emily screwed up her face, and combed through the moonlit rows of words - but eventually she found them in the middle of the second shelf, _Imperial Unabridged Dictionary, Death in the Month of Songs._ She pushed them apart with her fingers and tugged a yellowed notecard out, and she read as best she could, in faded ink -

“Rebecca Haight?”

“I found that deep in Coldridge Prison once upon a time. A midwife sent there when her clinic was raided some thirty years ago.” Daud put his glass down again without pouring more, then folded his hands in his lap. “It’s Jo’s mother. Pardon her. And don’t tell Jo I told you to.”

Emily balked. “You’re joking.”

“I wouldn’t joke about something like that.”

“If she was doing what I think she was…”

“She was.”

“The Abbey will kill me,” Emily pleaded…

“I know.” Daud stared down at the end table as the last dregs of milk rolled down his glass. “Consider it one less woman who died a useless death.”

Emily started through the doorway, before she looked back one more time - and she slipped the notecard into her coat, in her inside pocket beside the Heart.

“You’ll never know how much I hate you.”

“Good.” Daud examined his too-short fingernails. “Remember that hatred. Someday you might find a use for it.”

“But for Jo? I will consider it.”

“Thank you,” Daud said. “That’s all I ask.”

 

* * *

 

By the time Emily crept downstairs, the whole house had gone dark - and a soft silence lingered in the air, like it had curled up and fallen asleep.

She lit the lamp on the hallway wall, then winced as the orange light seared her eyes - and as soon as she could see straight, she made her way toward the back door. She passed the doorway to the clinic, and heard the baby snuffling inside - then rounded the corner, and put her head down, and turned up her coat lapels…

And she heard a pair of soft, clicking footsteps, just as she reached for the doorknob.

“Going somewhere?”

Emily slowly turned around.

“I heard what you said to Overseer Hayward. Thank you. I owe you one.”

“Eh. Don’t worry.” Joanna came down the hallway, her hands in the pockets of her coat. “Any other Overseer, and it wouldn’t have worked. Some days it’s better to be lucky than smart.”

“Well, if you say so.” Emily reached for the door handle again. “But it _is_ late. I should leave, if the Overseers are gone.”

“I know.” Joanna leaned against the wall, then pulled one hand out to rub her eye. “Both Mrs. Dent and the baby are sleeping. I should probably go to bed. It’s been a long night for all of us.”

Emily looked away. “Yes. It has.”

Joanna hesitated - then gave Emily a small, sad smile.

“I’m not going to find a body up there, am I?”

Emily let go of the door handle.

“No.”

“Good.” Joanna crossed her arms, and she sighed a soft, relieved sigh. “I would’ve understood why if I did. But there’s been enough death in this town.”

“It’s not even that. I would’ve killed him, and it wouldn’t bring her back.” The old hardwood creaked beneath Emily’s feet as she retreated from the door. “That’s the only thing I can think of being worth someone’s life. I can’t just start killing people if they won’t give me what I want.”

Joanna’s shoulders relaxed, and she chuckled despite herself. “Now if everyone in power thought like you, imagine what kind of world we’d have.”

“You know, there’s something even in just saying it to him. Like a thread you can tie off.” Emily scratched at her throat under her scarf as she stared at her toes. “Maybe my father was onto something. I didn’t realize it’d be enough.”

“Do you feel better, then?”

“Not really. But I think I will, in time.”

“That’s what counts.” Joanna fished in her pocket and frowned. “Before I forget, I just wanted to give you something before you go. It’s not much, I know, but I thought maybe it would help.”

Emily watched in silence…

“I used to keep this in my room when I was at the Cat, and no matter what the Overseers tell you, I think these old things are good luck.” Joanna pulled out a three-pronged bone charm, its arcane marks smoothed down with time. “And if anyone could use a little luck right now, it’s you.”

“I… I don’t know.” Emily took it by its bony limbs, then tried to give it back. “That sounds awfully important. I shouldn’t just take something like that.”

“It’s been fifteen years since I left, dear. I don’t need it anymore.”

“Well…” Emily closed her fists around the bone charm, before - “in which case, I have something for you, too.”

Joanna listened with wide, expectant eyes.

“The captain I’ve been staying with is a woman named Billie Lurk. That woman that Daud knew, the… the lieutenant you mentioned before.” Emily looked down, and she kept feeling the sides of the bone charm with her thumbs. “I’m not supposed to know that. She’s going under a different name. But I’ve seen some pages from her journal. I put it together on my own.”

“Billie Lurk?” Joanna hushed. “Really? I mean, Billie’s alive?”

“I can tell she’s had some hard times lately, but yes. She’s alive. And well.” Emily stuffed the bone charm in her trouser pocket, then looked up. “I think if I’d had an old friend… I’d want to know they were all right.”

“You can tell him yourself, you know.”

Emily squirmed. “I’d rather not, if it’s all the same to you.”

“Of course.” Joanna waved it off. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right.”

“Well… listen.” Joanna edged closer to the door. “I hope you get to the bottom of this… whatever’s happening in Dunwall. And I hope…”

Emily waited for Joanna to go on…

“Oh, to the Void with it,” Joanna said, and threw her arms around Emily’s sides.

Emily flinched and stood very straight, with her muscles very tight - but no matter how much she shrank into herself, Joanna didn’t let go. So eventually, she softened, and draped her own arms around Joanna’s neck - and for a minute more, they stayed there, nestled in each other’s grasp.

“You know, I think you’ll pull through this.” Joanna pressed her cheek into Emily’s coat. “If you’re half the girl I got to meet fifteen years ago, Delilah doesn’t stand a chance against you.”

“I’m not so sure of that.”

“I am.” Joanna patted Emily’s back. “Remember when the papers said you stayed up all night to finish a trade accord?”

“The Serko…”

“Yes, that.” Joanna stifled a laugh. “I believe in you, even if you don’t.”

Emily’s ears flushed pink, and she squeezed Joanna to her chest.

“Now, go on.” Joanna loosened her grip, then broke off the embrace. “Go. Give that Tyvian maid a promotion, so you can see her more often.”

“I will.”

“And go make your father proud. Don’t do anything he wouldn’t.”

“I won’t.”

And with that, Emily turned away, and unlocked and opened the door - then took a last step over the threshold, and disappeared into the night.

 

* * *

 

Half an hour later on the deck of the _Dreadful Wale,_ Meagan paced back and forth as the moonlight waned over the docks.

The old deck boards creaked beneath her, and the water lapped against the sides - and a chill wind blew past her, ruffling her sleeves and hair. She rubbed her hands together to warm them - then pulled at the neckline of her coat - and she shuffled over to the starboard rail and draped her arms over the side.

But she jumped away when she heard a deep, sudden _thunk_ against the hull.

“Who’s there?!”

Emily’s voice answered from somewhere beneath her. “Meagan?! Is that you?”

Meagan leaned over the rail. “How did you get back? The skiff’s still here!”

“I stole another!”

“Outsider’s blood…”

“Get me the rope up there!” Emily’s skiff thunked against the hull again. “Throw it down to me and tie it to something. I can do the rest myself.”

Meagan raced over to the coil of rope that lay further toward the starboard bow, then grabbed it and threw it over, keeping one end looped around her arm. When Emily latched on, Meagan tied her end onto the rail - and soon, Emily’s head poked up, and she hoisted herself over the side.

“Where _were_ you?” Meagan scrambled out of the way. “Do you know how long you’ve been gone? I sent Sokolov and Stilton to look for you, they came back without you an hour ago…”

Emily dusted her knees off. “Ugh…”

“Emily?”

Emily looked up. “What?”

“I asked you a question. Where _were_ you?”

Emily stood up straight and caught her breath.

“I think if I told you, you wouldn’t believe me.”

“Try me. I’ve got all night.”

Emily took one more glance over her shoulder at the thin, dark coastline.

“I found that shrine you asked me to, but I saw the Outsider, and passed out.” She smoothed down a windblown lock of her hair. “I’m not sure how long I was sleeping.”

“You mean you’ve been out all this time?”

“No, no. I woke up later, and I was upstairs in this house.” Emily strode across the deck, toward the door that led into the hold. “One thing led to another, and I ended up staying for hours. There was this woman, and she had a baby, and…” she interrupted herself - “anyway, that’s where I was.”

“Why didn’t you just leave?”

“I was going to. There was an Overseer lockdown.” Emily waited as Meagan heaved the door open for her. “It only ended about an hour ago, and I had to hide, but it was all right. It was good to see the people there. I think I put some things to rest.”

“‘Things to rest?’” Meagan held the door. “Who in the Void was in that house?”

“Well, it’s the strangest thing. I think it was someone you may know.”

Emily watched her head as she stepped through the doorway into the hold, and once Meagan had followed her in, she let the door swing closed. It shut with a heavy thud, and the ship’s bell jingled softly into the night - and after a quiet minute, the light in the porthole window snuffed out.

And the moon set over the _Dreadful Wale,_ and the ink-black waves on the shore - over the palace, and the dockyards, and the house on Campo Seta Road.


End file.
